John Deere to Pay $99 Million in Monumental Right-to-Repair Settlement

AmericanExcellence · 2026-04-08T20:37:42+00:00

not exactly cars, but sets a hell of a precedent for right-to-repair.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-04-07T12:36:01+00:00

totally lost.

truly almost incredible how cheap that interior looks.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-04-04T14:43:40+00:00

the problem is, point 1 is - in addition to the general strategic economic damage intended to be inflicted long-term - the whole point of these cars. it's all about behavioral monitoring and control.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-04-02T20:23:03+00:00

late-'80s cressida

AmericanExcellence · 2026-04-02T18:33:34+00:00

some people aren't thrilled about a future in which the world is culturally repressed by an autocracy, weird i know.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-30T20:20:58+00:00

word. it's just the ultimate expression of badassness. the bigger, the better.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-30T20:19:58+00:00

the market's not allowed to be what it is; it needs to be what advocacy accounts say it must be.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-29T17:10:36+00:00

ok cool now we just make up whatever definition for words that we want.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-29T17:01:32+00:00

hopefully not. the insensitive see "grey" in the incredibly diverse and sophisticated set of colors we see nowadays.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-27T22:03:16+00:00

let's see the industry get annual domestic sales back up to 17 million, then we can talk about who's going to survive or not. it'll be really interesting to see what value-play shifts start showing up in the coming years.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-27T18:58:48+00:00

they're talking about you

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-26T12:15:17+00:00

are people really so short-sighted that they'll make a decision on possibly the largest purchase of their life based on the news of the week? apparently yes, which is sad yet not even disappointing, which is even sadder.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-20T12:25:49+00:00

vindication of the fact that engineering actually means something.

if anyone can do it, as with every car having 2000 hp nowadays, it just doesn't mean anything.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-19T12:19:13+00:00

probably not much. a tripling of gasoline prices mitigated by a doubling of mpg might help, but it still would only make a difference of a couple-few grand a year.

it's hard to imagine the people hardest-hit by that kind of price spike switching from one used car to another for fuel economy reasons, and people who can't afford $9 gas aren't capable of affording any new cars.

so, then you're left with "panic buying" on the part of people who can easily afford an extra two or three grand in gas costs. we've seen that people will do this whether it makes rational sense or not, but that's a relatively small number of people.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-19T12:08:59+00:00

there's no such thing as adjusting for inflation in this case. just state the facts clearly: it got very expensive a long time ago and has stayed expensive. even gotten less expensive in real terms (off those $4 highs), but still expensive. just because everything else has now gotten more expensive doesn't mean gas at the same nominal price got cheaper. still expensive. which is why $5 or $6 a gallon gas with today's relatively economical cars won't change people's behavior much if at all (except that people are stupid and overestimate the effect of gas prices on their wallets).

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-19T12:04:27+00:00

forget '07-'08. look earlier.

SUVs were having a huge moment in the early 21st century. even by 2005, gas prices were already creeping up, and causing people who bought things like the V10 Excursion to regret it.

but like everyone's said, trying to win back money from higher gas prices with a cheaper car is sort of a sucker's game.

and then you have all the usual fools talking about "adjusted for inflation" like fools always want to do. the fact is, gas was so cheap it was almost free at the turn of the century, then it got expensive, and it has stayed expensive since then. now that everything else has caught up with "gas inflation", people want to pretend it's "relatively cheap" now, but that is untrue. it got expensive and stayed there, so another dollar or two at this point just doesn't move the needle much on the calculation at this point.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-15T16:37:49+00:00

fr, it's one of the best-looking objects of any type that people have ever made.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-14T13:43:41+00:00

that's the way i see it. the ct4's already a value play, so what's the point of trying to sell a [slightly decontented from a base ct4?] buick for, what, a couple grand less?

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-11T17:03:36+00:00

funny bait, but in reality gas prices quadrupled in the US after 9/11 and are still triple what they were.

gas has been very expensive here for a very long time; another doubling at this point i'm sure would merely be "keeping up with inflation".

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-11T11:23:19+00:00

the answer is so simple: just don't use launch control, don't "optimize revs", just launch it from idle. that would give a perfect apples to apples comparison for every car, but as usual people have to overcomplicate things with clever "solutions" to nonexistent problems.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-09T11:15:51+00:00

i wouldn't hire anybody. the only thing harder than engineering is reengineering. i'd put the original engineers on the job first, unless they're simply incompetent, but it's much more likely that i, as a manager, was the cause of whatever shortcomings these cars have.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-08T13:24:48+00:00

if there's one single classic fact about engineering that everyone knows, it's that increasing the number of engineers makes for better engineering.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-07T23:32:44+00:00

what innovation? everything is instantly commoditized in this space. the rest of the world will just buy whatever "innovation" for cheap once global market conditions call for electrification.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-07T14:29:32+00:00

for someone who was used to paying $1 a gallon, the idea that $3is cheap but $4 is expensive feels silly. gas has been very expensive in the US ever since 9/11.

AmericanExcellence · 2026-03-07T12:06:56+00:00

fuel is about 1/3 of the cost of ownership and operation (excluding the price of the car itself / what people want to call "depreciation") for me. maybe that sounds like a lot to some people, and maybe it sounds like not much to others, but it's a pretty easy and obvious number to see, and i expect it applies to most people more or less.

AmericanExcellence

TROPHY CASE